fafalone

hi i'm fafalone and i'm new

Because it is short 1 electron from a stable shell.

Just one of the filenames the sasser worm saves itself as.

yeah ever since that other thread about knuckle cracking appeared i haven't been able to stop either :/

The affected files for the vast majority of what infects peoples computers these days are single executables that are always listed in some startup location. Just gotta find the suspicious looking entries.

It's pretty hard not to know when your computer has an active virus. Knowing what should be on your processes list helps too, as well as having a taskbar CPU/memory usage graph... once you see something fishy, identifying it is trivial for an experienced human.

No, because it would still be subject to definition update delays.

You're claiming AV programs shouldn't remove anything thats not explicitly a virus, and we obviously have different definitions of what constitutes a virus. That difference should be resolved.

It matters quite a bit, because you have to make a dinstinction between what is and isn't a virus. Does the fact something hijacks a browser instantly disqualify it from being a virus no matter what else it does?

So whats your definition of a virus?

Of course it's really simple to distill your own concentrated form.

IE hijacks that block msconfig and registry use and otherwise actively monitor for programs that try to remove that are "borderline viruses", especially when they try to spread themselves across the LAN. 6 on its known list? I've encountered more than that on a single PC before (yes, more than 6 *different* programs competing with eachother to hijack IE).

You're fortunate then. There's stuff even more bizarre than that I encounter on peoples computers around here, such as this one hijacking program that permanently modified IE, eventually rendering it completely useless, and AV programs rarely catch them.

Spyware applications often hijack the browser, prevent you from going to sites you want, redirect all your searches, and randomly display ads. How is this not a borderline virus?

Didn't help or hinder, just wasted their time. ..and I'm referring to it being taught as something that actually did happen. It's certainly worth a mention as a ridiculous theory of the past, but absolutely shouldn't be taught as if it were valid.

Doesn't mean they should have been, especially nowadays when the overwhelming evidence disproves it.

Adding yet another time consuming step. It really works best for me to just do things by hand, considering I have to remove something once every 2-3 months at most.

Norton Antivirus isn't really a fundamentally flawed piece of software... Alot of the problems arise from spyware (borderline virus)... AV programs do nothing about most of these.

Why must you spew this kind of garbage on a scientific site full of people who aren't idiots? There's plenty of sites full of people ignorant enough to listen to you, I suggest looking for one.

What's even more scary is that President Bush would most likely support Creationism still being taught.

Ok we have a hardware firewall that essentially blocks everything. We also get free AV license, so definitions are up to date. Now granted the viruses got on their system because of things like Kazaa, but hte point is updated AV programs and a highly restrictive hardware firewall didn't stop them.

It's just sad that people rely completely on a commercial, closed-source program by a for-profit company to secure their computers against the various types of nasty programs out there. This week alone I've had to help half a dozen people (only 1 for sasser) get viruses off their computer because their anti-virus programs weren't picking them up.

Doesn't surprise me at all. Science courses before college are aimed at the lowest common denominator who aren't interested in it anyway; the few that are get bored out of it.

When you invent a mechanism that closes at a good fraction of the speed of light, be sure to let the world know.

The problem arises with getting light in without it very nearly instantly escaping.